Interview with Dr. Laura McKain

This week our guest returns to highlight these 5 experiences you can use to land your first pharma job. She is the founder of the Physician Nonclinical Career Hunters Facebook group which has now over 19,000 physicians. And she last joined us in Episode 214 of the PNC Podcast.

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Dr. Laura McKain is a board-certified physician with more than 10 years of pharmaceutical industry experience. She received her medical degree from Georgetown University in Washington, DC, and completed her training in obstetrics and gynecology at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia.

Her career transitioned to the pharmaceutical industry where she was involved in projects encompassing a broad range of therapeutic areas. For example, she provided medical leadership to a high-profile Women’s Health clinical development program at Myovant Science.

She is well-known for running the 19,000-member Physician Nonclinical Career Hunters Facebook Group. And she has been coaching physicians and helping them optimize their resumés for many years.

She recently started the Pharma Industry Special Interest Group (PISIG). It is an active learning community for physicians in clinical practice separate from the Facebook group. 

Pharma Industry Special Interest Group (PISIG)

The PISIG enables members to:

  • learn different pharma roles,
  • acquire knowledge about foundational industry work,
  • build skills to be a pharma/biotech candidate,
  • develop an effective resumé from your training and experience, and
  • receive expert advice and coaching during a job search. 

This learning is acquired during twice-monthly live calls and regularly scheduled recorded seminars.

Highlight These 5 Experiences

These are the five experiences that can be leveraged for the typical practicing physician:

  1. Using evidence-based medicine in practice to assess the risks and benefits of various medical therapies.
  2. Public speaking, such as didactics to students/residents/colleagues, patient educational presentations, and pharma speaker bureaus.
  3. Staying abreast of new therapeutic developments in your specialty.
  4. Involvement in clinical research as an investigator or being a physician who refers patients for participation in clinical trials.
  5. Regularly sharing experiences of adverse drug reactions to pharmaceutical manufacturers or the FDA, or participating in other formal systems for collecting safety information, such as registries or Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) programs.

You can use this information in your resume, during an interview whether it is phone or face to face, and even in your LinkedIn profile. These are things that expand upon what your professional experience is and what your professional experience has included.

Dr. McKain’s Advice

“Networking is absolutely critical to making a career transition. I think talking to people who are already in these roles and getting their advice about things to do is really, really important. I think you can run across some of those people in the Facebook group.

“You can certainly find lots of experts on LinkedIn. And I think there’s also just a really long list of experts that have appeared on your podcast, John, that people should also look for that are willing and able to help people in their career journey.”

Dr. McKain also reminded us that there are a number of pharma companies that offer fellowships. These drugs safety fellowships and more broad pharma biotech industry fellowships also pay you while you learn. The majority of fellows are offered a job once the fellowship is completed successfully.

During our interview, Laura mentioned that she would provide a written document with examples of phrases to describe your clinical experience in a way that Is relevant to a career in pharma. [Click the link to download that handout for free].

Summary

Most physicians can find experiences from their practices that will demonstrate transferable skills when applying for their first pharma job. And there are some tactics that can be implemented and completed in a short time frame. In that way, physicians will be able to improve their chances of getting that job, without acquiring a new certification or committing to a one- or two-year fellowship.

NOTE: Look below for a transcript of today’s episode.

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Disclaimers:

Many of the links that I refer you to are affiliate links. That means that I receive a payment from the seller if you purchase the affiliate item using my link. Doing so has no effect on the price you are charged. And I only promote products and services that I believe are of high quality and will be useful to you.

The opinions expressed here are mine and my guest’s. While the information provided on the podcast is true and accurate to the best of my knowledge, there is no express or implied guarantee that using the methods discussed here will lead to success in your career, life, or business.

The information presented on this blog and related podcast is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only. I do not provide medical, legal, tax, or emotional advice. If you take action on the information provided on the blog or podcast, it is at your own risk. Always consult an attorney, accountant, career counselor, or other professional before making any major decisions about your career.